


I'm seventeen and I don't know anything about love

by divenire



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Kya is Zuko's daughter, Other, a talk about love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29041791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divenire/pseuds/divenire
Summary: In his life, Zuko has two conversations about love.Or, why love is like soup.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Kya II & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 72





	I'm seventeen and I don't know anything about love

**Author's Note:**

> Because, after all, no one is stopping us from thinking that Zuko and Katara are happily married with two daughters without necessarily changing the events of TLOK.

Over the years Zuko had learned the art of patience.

Looking back to when he was a young teenager ready to spit out all the pain and anger that life had thrown at him, he could not help but think that time had smoothed his soul. During the years he had spent at sea, there had been rare moments when he had stopped to observe his uncle and wondered where those infinite reserves of patience and wisdom came from. It was almost unnerving when he thought about it. It was unnerving the way Zuko kept spewing bitter words at him and receiving only encouragement and a kind smile in response.

Now he thought he could finally understand him, now that he was forty-seven and had two daughters as passionate as he had been in his youth. 

Not that he was an overly wise man - or a particularly patient one, for that matter - but he liked to think that not going berserk at the slightest inconvenience was a respectable achievement.

His daughters had played a major role in this. From the moment Izumi had come into the world, with her bright golden eyes and a penchant for crying at night, Zuko had come to terms with the idea that he had to leave behind his reputation for low tolerance and bad temper.

Then there was Kya, who had inherited from her mother not only the colour of her eyes, but the inner fire that should have been alien to a waterbender.

Oh, they had given him a hard time over the last nineteen years. Since when they couldn't even reach his knee and ran around the palace, shocking the strict nobles and servants of the Fire Nation, to when, barely out of their teens, they had started pestering both him and Katara with irreverent questions. Zuko managed to get away with it most of the time by playing dirty and looking at his wife with those hangdog eyes of his, thus convincing her to take on dangerous answers.

 _"My love, I won't always be there to save you from unpleasant conversations,"_ she used to tell him, once they were alone.

_"They grow too fast, Katara."_

Katara was always smiling at that point, with that smile of hers with which she could convince him to do anything.

Zuko smiled to himself as he strolled through the gardens.

Spring was gentle in the Fire Nation. The sparse trees in the gardens were dressed in bright green, the gentle breeze made it pleasant to be in the sun.

It was at that moment that she saw Kya near the pond - how many times did he have to tell her that this was not a good place to practice her waterbending?

But his thoughts stopped when the young girl lifted a column of water and knocked it back with more force and ferocity than Zuko thought her capable of. She let out a frustrated yelp and walked away from the water, going to sit under a nearby tree. The turtleducks had all fled and silence reigned in the garden.

Zuko approached his daughter slowly, afraid of being the next victim of her wrath.

These were the moments when Kya reminded him most of his wife: when the usual kindness in her eyes was eclipsed by a fierce anger and the determination in her gaze would make anyone's knees tremble.

Kya did not hear him coming - or perhaps decided to ignore him anyway. Zuko hesitated for a few moments before deciding to speak to her.

"Is everything alright, Kya?"

The girl kept glaring at the pond for a few seconds, only turning her gaze to him when she could no longer ignore him.

"Yes."

"You look angry." 

"I am not angry."

"I would swear that even at the South Pole someone must have seen that column of water." 

Kya, in response, crossed her arms and looked at the pond again.

Zuko sighed and thought that at that moment he would have done anything to leave that task to Katara.

"May I sit here?" He asked her politely and with a bit of resignation.

Kya shrugged and Zuko took that as a yes. He sat down on the grass beside her daughter, thinking that somewhere in the palace his advisor must be feeling a twinge in his chest from the contact of his tunic with the freshly cut grass.

He looked at his daughter out of the corner of his eyes and noticed that she had not moved an inch, her arms still crossed over her chest and her eyebrows stubbornly furrowed.

"Did you fight with Izumi?" He tried to ask her to test the waters. 

"No."

"Did you have a fight with someone?"

There was almost a hint of desperation in his voice at that point. Perhaps Kya had noticed it too, because she prevented herself from uttering the sharp reply that hovered at the tip of her tongue. Her eyes softened.

"No, Dad. I didn't fight with anyone. I'm just a little upset."

Kya finally turned towards him, hugging her knees with her arms and resting her head on them. She had grown so much and she was so beautiful, but at that moment Zuko could do nothing but think of that little girl that used to hide in the far corners of the palace after getting into trouble, in that exact same position.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked her with a gentle smile. "Not really."

They were silent for a while. Zuko could feel the battle going on in his daughter's head, torn between the desire to get out everything that was bothering her and the desire to remain stubbornly silent, with that adolescent determination at keeping everything inside. She wanted to tell her that she could confide in him, but he also knew that teenagers tend not to believe that adults can understand them.

And maybe that is true, he thought. Perhaps time, in smoothing out the souls, also smoothes out the memories and one tend to forget how it felt like being seventeen. In the absurd downsizing of problems, adults no longer remember what it felt like to have their souls on fire, to live out those worries magnified in their adolescent heads on a daily basis. Zuko, however, had never forgotten that desire to be desperately understood by the world, which clashed with his inability to channel his emotions in the right direction.

"The thing is ..." Kya began, rubbing her hands together in agitation. Zuko waited silently for the girl to find the right words or, perhaps, the courage to formulate them.

"There is this person, OK?" She said finally, drawing out a new resolve. "There's this person who ... I liked." Her cheeks turned pink, but she decided to ignore the embarrassment and continued to speak, animated by the inexplicable courage she seemed to have found.

 _You have no idea how much you look like your mother,_ Zuko thought for the thousandth time.

"And I don't know if this person had feelings for me - I never told her anything, _of course_ , I could never tell her! And now this person ... She's going out with another person and I don't know how I should feel about it, because both these people are my friends, but I can't be happy for them! And I'm so angry, because I don't know what I'm supposed to do!"

In her fury Kya had stood up and had her arms raised towards the sky. The blush on her cheeks no longer had anything to do with embarrassment, Zuko noticed. The girl was animated by completely different feelings.

The man sighed again. He should have expected that, sooner or later, he would have to deal with such a conversation - indeed, he was surprised he had got away with it for so long. He was also pretty sure he knew the identity of the people his daughter was referring to, but he preferred not to mention it.

"Kya, it's completely normal to feel this way. You don't have to be happy right away, these things take time."

"I will _never_ be happy!"

"Kya -" The girl had begun pacing back and forth, her stride so determined that it ruined the blades of grass. Zuko grabbed the sleeve of her tunic and pulled it gently towards her. "Kya, please, sit down."

After a few moments of reluctance, the girl returned to her previous position, wrapping her knees even more tightly, as if she wanted to take up as little space as possible and disappear from the world after being so loud.

Zuko reached out a hand and tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear.

"I know you don't want to hear this, but I know what you're feeling. And you'll probably never be happy for them and you'd have every reason in the world ..." He paused, allowing himself time to caress her face.

"With time you will get used to the idea and you will be able to accept it. It will take time, but I assure you that every day it will hurt a little less, until you wake up one morning and realise that the pain is gone."

Kya looked at him with the expression of someone who did not believe him at all - and perhaps Zuko himself was not so convinced.

"Feelings are stupid."

"Feelings aren't stupid, sweetheart. Feelings make us stupid and make us do stupid things." The girl tried to suppress the smile that was forming on her lips.

"I can't imagine you doing stupid things for love." Zuko then burst out laughing.

"You didn't know me at your age."

The grin returned to his daughter's face and her eyes sparkled. Zuko lifted his gaze to the sky, resigned to having to share stories of his embarrassing youth with his daughter.

"What regrettable deed have you done, let’s hear it?"

"I fell in love with my best friend of ten years, not to mention a waterbender from another Nation and my best friend's ex-girlfriend … which is the Avatar.” 

The world was about to implode when everyone found out we were dating."

That Aang and Katara had spent some time together was common knowledge. No one liked to bring up that detail, it seemed almost forgotten, but Zuko was sure that his daughters and Aang's sons knew about it.

"But this is not stupid."

"I would have done anything to be with your mother, even go against my advisors ...And for someone in my position in those years ... But I have never regretted anything." He concluded with a nostalgic smile.

The expression on Kya's face became uncertain again.

"So ... you've also been in love with someone who was with someone else?"

Zuko began to turn a blade of grass over in his hands. _This_ wasa conversation he had not expected to have.

"It's ... Complicated." He finally told her, but Kya showed no sign of wanting to drop the subject.

"I started to feel something for your mother during the war, but ... It was really complicated. I don't think she felt the same way about me at that time, though.

There was the war and everything was so uncertain ... And I also knew very well how Aang felt about her. For this and many other reasons I didn't have the courage to say anything to her and ... After the war it was too late, because she and Aang started dating."

_"Ouch."_

Zuko shrugged. A slight gust of wind brought Kya's hair back to her face, the hair the girl refused to tie up in the style of her Nation, except in official ceremonies.

"In the end it all worked out for the best."

"One day you'll have to tell me the story of how you confessed your undying love to mom."

Zuko laughed and shook his head. He didn't think he would ever be able to survive such embarrassment.

They were still silent and Zuko noticed that the sweetness had returned to his daughter's eyes, albeit veiled by a slight sadness.

"Were you in love with this person?"

Kya kept her eyes fixed on the water.

"I'm seventeen years old, Dad. I don't even know what love is."

That sentence brought him back in time to a conversation he had had with Katara that he would never forget. It had been an evening many, many years ago, in those days when they were sheltering on Ember Island waiting for the Comet.

_("Have you ever been in love, Zuko?")._

"Your mother once told me that love is like soup." Kya turned to look at him and burst out laughing. "Like what?"

"Like soup."

"It doesn't make sense, Dad."

"I assure you it did. It had something to do with ... um, with the right ingredients and ..."

He was always bad at remembering the details of conversations, whether it was a joke from his uncle or speeches that he treasured in his heart.

_"('Love is like soup. My grandmother used to say that.')_

"It just doesn't make sense, Dad."

Kya's voice brought him back to reality.

"Okay, maybe I won't remember the exact words, but the point is that love has no precise definition and is not something that just exists."

Kya continued to smile, but was listening to him with a new focus.

"Love is ... probably at the same time the easiest and hardest thing in the world.

The point, Kya ... The point is that you have to do a ceaseless work of patience, trust, affection ... Even compromise. A lot of times things don't go the way you wanted, and you have to learn to let things go. You have to be constantly willing to fix them when something goes wrong. This is probably the most complex part: you must never get tired of wanting to make things right.

But the most beautiful thing is that you know you have a person by your side who wants the same things and is ready to do the same things with you and for you."

"When did you get so wise, Dad?" His daughter teased him, but Zuko saw that her eyes were a little bright.

"Years and years spent with Uncle Iroh."

Kya caught him off guard when she suddenly threw her arms around his neck and pulled him into a hug. Zuko stroked her hair and held her tightly.

"I'm sorry it turned out this way with this person. I really hope everything will turn out for the best." "Thanks, Dad."

Kya loosened the embrace, gave him a kiss on the cheek and stood up.

"I'd better go, maybe I'll find the courage to answer Lin and Tenzin's letters -" The girl widened her eyes and covered her mouth with her hands.

"Lin and Tenzin, huh?"

"Gotta go, have a good day!"

Zuko watched her run towards the palace, his eyes filled with love.

* * *

  


_"Have you ever been in love, Zuko?"_

_"Why do you ask?"_

_"I'm just curious."_

__

_Katara was fourteen years old and her eyes in the dark were so bright they put the stars to shame._

_"Why are you asking me?"_

_"Because I want to hear it from you."_

_"Have you ever been in love?"_

_"I'm fourteen years old, Zuko. I don't know anything about love." She had told him, shrugging. "And anyway, I asked you first."_

_"I had a girlfriend."_

_"It's not the same thing."_

_"What do you know? You just said you don't know anything about love."_

_"Well, I know this. I know it's not the same."_

_"Then what is love?" He had asked her, a note of defiance in his voice. Katara wasn't the sort of person to back down from a fight. Or from an argument, for that matter._

_"Love is like soup."_

_Zuko burst out laughing._

__

__

_"Like soup? That doesn't make sense, Katara."_

_"But it does!"_

_He had continued to laugh and she had pushed him into the sand._

_"It makes sense, listen to me!”_

_Zuko had pulled himself together, trying with all his might not to burst out laughing in her face - not in enemy territory, not so close to the sea. He had learned from his mistakes._

_"Okay, let's hear it." His smile had not faded from his face._

_"Love is like soup. My grandmother used to say that. Soup has to be prepared carefully and you have to put all the ingredients in it, each in the right amount, otherwise the soup you want to make will never come out. And you have to remember that not everyone eats soup the same way, so you have to know what to put in it. And you have to remember to always stir it and not to cook it on too high a heat or you will burn everything." Katara kept count on her fingers, as if trying to remember everything her grandmother had told her about love and soups. "Oh, and you must always make plenty, because soup is never enough on cold winter nights. And you should never serve it cold; nobody likes cold soup."_

_Zuko had burst out laughing again, this time with a new gentleness in his gaze. Katara had started chuckling in turn._

_"There may be wisdom in this."_

_"There's wisdom in it, it's not my fault you don't understand anything."_

_That night Zuko returned to his room with a quite lighter heart._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I would love reading your feedbacks!!


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